A massive amount of dish soap and hot water.
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Ice cubes and cold water in small cup, hot water around big cup.
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A Google for
free ceramic cup stuck in cup
returns lots of results.
A method not suggested here yet is “put just enough water in the [outer] mug to touch the bottom of the [inner mug]. put the whole concoction in the freezer”. The expansion of the water into ice may force the two apart.
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Outer cup 3/4 submerged in a pot of water. Heat up the water. While heating the water, keep the inner cup packed with a bag of crushed ice.
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This happened to my dog once. You have to grab it by the hind legs and pull back while someone holds the other dog. It may help if you put them both in a warm water bath filled with ice cubes. But only after you thoroughly coat them in butter.
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With all due respect, every cup of tea I’ve ever made begs to differ. Ceramic seems to handle pretty significanct thermal shock well, whether with a high or a low temperature gradient in the material. As a rigid material it presumably does have stresses that it endures when it’s heated but it seems to bear them well.
In short, putting the outer cup in the tea shouldn’t do it much more harm than putting tea in the cup, and it might give it enough expansion to pop the inner cup out.
[Edit: unless there’s some sort of Prince Rupert’s Drops type thing going on…]
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Sure you could use the thermal expansion ideas and they will probably work and then you’ll have 2 cups again and yadda yadda.
I would tie the larger cup firmly to a stake in the ground, then call Jason Weisberger to come over in his R90S and give him a rope firmly tied to the other cup. Burn outs -> 2 cups.
If that doesn’t work you have to know someone with a giant pickup that advertises amazing towing capacity but is in reality used for mall duty. Call them, same general plan.
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Lock picking lawyer perhaps?
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Try putting ice cubes in the small cup, and put the big cup in a bowl of hot water. The cups are ceramic snd have low thermal conductivity, so this should work well after 3 minutes. Machinists do something similar as an alternative to press fittings. They heat a ring of material and cool a shaft of material. Then they fit them together and when the temperature normalizes between them, you will need a press to separate them.
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Came for the much anticipated reference to Dirk Gently and the stuck couch in the stairwell … left disappointed.
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If you have one hot and the other with ice water, you may crack them even though we’re conditioned to believe that ceramics do not crack from temperature changes. I actually just had this happen a few months ago and for reasons I won’t go into it was extremely heartbreaking. Not just the glaze, the thing broke.
How about putting them in a 1/2 gallon ziploc bag filled with antifreeze, and put in the freezer. Cold = contraction. Antifreeze liquid will help lubricate. With it still in bag, try to separate the cups.
Wash thoroughly.
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Don’t be disappointed, it was covered above by @Purplecat.
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There’s many a slip, twist the cup and the lip. …maybe with some oil too.
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I’m (honestly) super embarrassed that I missed that.
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The point is, given enough heat differential, ceramic does not expand or contract. It cracks.
The different sizes will expand at different rates. Nuke them, or bake them a bit, and the bigger cup will expand more.
Have you called the Lockpicking Lawyer? He probably has a tool for that.
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I would soak the cups in dish soap overnight with the cups laying on their side.
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Indeed, that’s the one I thought of.
Santorum is my go-to solution for these situations. Funny thing is, nobody wants to drink out of those cups again.
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